Hollowware, Gold Brooch and Gold Bracelet

Hollowware is an inflatable bowl made in metallic plastic foil. Hollowware is intended as a comment and a play on words relating to material and function. Hollowware is a professional term normally applied to silver objects. For this bowl, Buck chose an approach that challenges the traditional understanding of the concept and thus created an inflatable object for the table that is both humorous and functional.

Gold brooch & Gold bracelet are inflatable pieces of jewellery in gold foil. As a trade, jewellery design has for generations focused more on the monetary value of the materials than on the artistic value – jewellery was seen as an investment in precious materials: gold, silver and gems. As a modern jewellery designer, Kim Buck takes an ironic stance to these mechanisms, insisting that the value of his jewellery lies in their concept, design and craftsmanship.

Kim Buck

b. 1957, Danish Goldsmith

Buck trained as a goldsmith with Gilbert Pretzmann in 1982 and graduated from the Danish College of Jewellery and Silversmithing in 1985. Since 1990, he has had his own workshop and gallery, and in the period of 1999-2001 he acted as an associate professor at the School of Design and Crafts at Göteborg University. He has also designed jewellery for the Danish design firm Georg Jensen. His work as a jeweller covers a wide range, but a common feature is his attempt to give his works a functional appeal. Buck has a highly conceptual approach to jewellery. In recent years he has been exploring the symbols, conventions and clichés of his trade and sought to uncover and challenge them through his work. That was also his approach when he created the bowl Hollowware, which was included in Crafts Collection 11. Buck’s work has won him many accolades, including the lifelong grant from the Danish Arts Foundation and the Ole Haslund Artists’ Grant.